Blood Moon over Ravnica

Abel is playing against Neil at a local Modern 1k. Abel calls you over and says that he and Neil just realized that Niel’s Stomping Ground is no longer a forest because of Abel’s Blood Moon, but they both forgot to put Niel’s Utopia Sprawl enchanting it into the graveyard several turns ago when Blood Moon resolved. What do you do?

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Answer

Our first answer is from Bernie Hoelschen “This should result in a GPE: GRV for the Abel (when Blood Moon resolved, the target for Utopia Sprawl became illegal since it is now a Mountain and should have been placed in the graveyard), but this also results in a GPE: FTMGS for Neil, since he did not point out the rule violation. The game rule is still actively being broken since Blood Moon is still in play, so move Utopia Sprawl to the graveyard and issue the appropriate infraction (assuming no prior penalties, Warnings for both).”

Bernie correctly identifies the fix here: we need to put this Utopia Sprawl into Niel’s Graveyard. Game Rules Violation allows us to apply this as a partial fix of a missed zone change. Even if we don’t apply that partial fix, State-Based Actions will apply, and Utopia Sprawl will make its way to the graveyard.

As for penalties, Max Tiedemann suggests GPE-GRV for both players. The Utopia Sprawl is in an incorrect zone. It should be in the graveyard but it is on the battlefield. Abel cast Blood Moon and Niel did not move the Utopia Sprawl from the Mountain to the graveyard. Fix: put the Utopia Sprawl in the correct zone (graveyard). This is clearly GPE-GRV for Abel, as his spell caused the error, but there is quite the split on F2MGS for Neil, or to issue two Game Rules Violations. The IPG is a bit unclear, and we can issue double GRV if we believe that both players were responsible for the error. We come down on the side of Failure to Maintain Game State for Neil, but issuing GRVs to both players is defendable.